Hellraisers Read Free

done this before but Forrest had only heard stories—the way the world is torn open, the way they swarm out from behind the paper-thin shell of reality. He had a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide and white, the brightest things in the truck. She didn’t offer him any words of comfort. What would be the point? Chances were that in less than half an hour the only evidence he’d ever existed would be his entry in the Book of Dead Engineers.
    Right next to her own.
    â€œHang on!” yelled the driver, wrestling with the wheel. The truck lurched off the expressway, thumping into the side of the road hard enough to jolt them all off their seats. Pan was pushed back by an invisible hand as they accelerated, her stomach trying to punch its way out past her spine, the world flashing by outside the tinted windows too fast to see. It didn’t matter how fast they were going. They couldn’t outrun them. They couldn’t escape, they couldn’t hide. The only thing that mattered was finding cover, where nobody could see what happened next.
    â€œGet off the street,” Ostheim said, reading her mind. “By my calculation…” He swore. “Twenty minutes, Pan, and counting, fast. Get out of sight.”
    The world cannot know. It’s the only thing that counts, it’s more important than your own life . Ostheim had drilled that into her on day one. And every day since.
    So why the hell were they heading right into the heart of Staten Island?
    â€œOut of sight, goddammit!” Herc yelled, grabbing the seat as they smashed into the back of an SUV, sending it spinning out toward the side of the road.
    Too late, Pan thought as the driver steered them around a wide bend, so fast that the world outside was just a blur. The screeching tires threw up smoke, and for a second the driver almost lost it. There was a wet retching sound as Forrest puked over his trousers but Pan ignored it. There was something else in the air alongside the smell of vomit. A thick, heavy, sulfurous scent that she knew all too well.
    Their smell. The stench of hell.
    â€œTwenty minutes, Pan,” Ostheim repeated, like she hadn’t heard him the first time.
    Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes between her, Forrest, and an eternity of agony. Twenty minutes before they dragged her kicking and screaming down to hell.
    â€œThose Lawyers better shift their asses,” she yelled at Ostheim, cursing herself—for the hundredth time at least—for ever accepting his offer.
    The Engine.
    The goddamned Devil’s Engine.
    She’d always known it would be the death of her.

 
    BREATHLESS
    Marlow had jogged a block and a half before he dared to slow down. Crossing the street, he tripped into the alley that ran down the back of the expressway, crashing against a fence. He took another couple of puffs of his inhaler for good measure, feeling the last of the blockage shift from his windpipe. His lungs still ached, though, like he’d breathed in a lungful of pepper spray and run a marathon, not a few hundred yards.
    He spat out a wad of phlegm and wiped the sweat from his brow. Only here, in the sudden quiet—just the distant rumble of the city and the eerie wail of a siren—did the events of the last few minutes sink in.
    What the hell were you thinking?
    He was screwed. Not only had he been expelled from the last school that would take him, he’d also committed vandalism and assault—on a cop . There was probably an APB out on him by now; the siren he could hear would be a squad car blazing up the street. This was Mariners Harbor, they’d shoot him on sight.
    His palms stung from where he’d pushed Yogi, and he rubbed them on his pants, trying to work out a plan. The best thing would be to turn around, head back to the school with his tail between his legs, offer to pay for the paintwork to be redone or something. He could get down on his hands and knees, kowtow his way back to his math